My Grand Tour

 

     “Neckties, ascots or cravats, gentlemen, as well as jackets, are required in the dining room of Brown's Hotel.” My brother and I, bringing up the rear of the family contingent passing into the dining room, had been stopped in mid stride by the maitre d'hotel with an index finger planted firmly in each sternum. Tastefully clad in Harris tweed jackets atop new Merino sweaters over crisp Oxford collars open at the throat, we'd somehow neglected neck-wear, assuming, as we might have the world over, that sweaters trumped the need for further cervical adornment. The family had been ushered off amidst much pomp and fuss to a far table by the kitchen where my father could be heard inquiring about the pedigree of the gin while our smarmy tormentor led us aside to a small alcove. There, at the epicenter of the land of the Liberty Print, he reached into a closet and produced two ties of such vibrant and chaotic polychrome as to be best described as Vintage Jackass. These we dutifully slipped on, and, centering the knots carefully, tucking the rest beneath our sweaters, we presented with just a touch of eye-roll. “ Just so,” he deftly slid a forefinger beneath each knot and flipped the ties back out atop our sweaters. Turning back towards his guests, he offered as a parting shot, “ … a pair of hairnets or barrettes, should you find it perhaps more comfortable to bind your flowing locks.”

   We were on the final three-day leg of the Grand Tour which had begun a week earlier at daVinci Airport under the watchful gaze of hundreds of Carabinieri armed to the teeth as a hedge against the current fashion for airline hijacking. Dad had pulled out all the stops for this trip and we were met by a man with a sign that might have read “ McFaggio” and whisked away at high speed to the Hotel d'Inghilterra. While my brother and I drifted about the Via del Corso hounded by three-note shepherd pipers and mimes, my father badgered room-service for such American staples as Scotch Tape and construction paper with which to assemble an elaborate Christmas tree he then taped to the vintage wallpaper of their suite. That night we dined at Alfredo where my father immediately asked to see Alfredo himself. The waiter produced an elderly gentleman who may or may not have been Alfredo but nonetheless made a fairly convincing show of remembering my father dining there while awaiting the birth of his eldest son some nineteen years earlier. It was at Ristorante Alfredo that we established the tortuous gustatory regimen that would follow us through three cities and render my father nearly apoplectic at every meal: I, as a vegetarian, would scan the menu for any entre that might be meatless – in this case the eponymous Fettuccine - entirely forgoing the specialties offered by Europe's finest eateries; my brother would inevitably order an assortment of the most expensive items and my sister would demand Ketchup, get three bites into her dinner and announce that she felt sick and needed to throw up. Between tremulous meals we stood beneath a balcony near the Tiber and gazed up at the apartment my parents lived in when my brother was born, hit the Colosseum and the Catacombs, went to St Peter's to catch the Pope, checked out the Duomi at Sienna and San Gimignano and, as quickly as we'd arrived, boarded the night train for Paris, pockets stuffed with palmieri and bitter oranges.

   I had every intention of enjoying Paris and particularly looked forward to locating Numero 10, Place d'Italie, the address I knew from years of French class belonged to Marie Thibaut, her Papa, Mamon, frère, chien and chat. Years later, on another trip, I did find the place – which turned out to be a dusty storefront devoted to the wholesaling of pin-ball machines and not the grand, fin-de-ciecle residence I'd imagined – but on this occasion I had the dubious good fortune to run into my old friend, Bumper, within hours of arriving at the hotel. Bumper swept me away on an empty stomach for an evening that started out on Burgundy but soon hit the harder stuff, progressing through warm Scotch, Absinthe and Algerian hash. There might have been an omelet in there somewhere, too. My three days in Paris were spent crawling back and forth from my fetid bed to the fetid toilet and weakly barring entry to the frustrated, daily maid service in a hotel room I'd have absolutely no recollection of returning to in the wee, wee hours following that initial, debauched ramble. Someone scooped me up eventually and put me on the Boat-train for London and the enduring memory of our humiliation at the hands of a petty tyrant.